John McCain Didn't Mince Words About President Trump in an Op-Ed

It is still baffling that John McCain tolerated Donald Trump in any capacity—at all—after then-candidate Trump assaulted McCain's military record in Vietnam. The president, after all, once described avoiding sexually transmitted diseases in 1970s New York as his "personal Vietnam," and secured five draft deferments to ensure he never had to contend with the actual struggle. But Trump's support in Arizona was strong during primary season, at time when McCain was running for reelection to the Senate and faced a primary challenge from the right. So, in what was not his finest hour, McCain largely avoided voicing opposition to Trump's carnival train campaign in public, looking on as it hurtled off the cliff and yanked the nation with it.

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McCain survived reelection, and seemed prepared to repeat his ignominious feat when the Republican Senate took up healthcare reform in July with a truly despicable bill. McCain voted to advance the bill to debate, earning Trumpian praise on the Tweet Machine, but he ultimately torpedoed the bill in dramatic fashion. This was a small redemption for the veteran senator. Some observers even contended McCain had a grand plan to kill the bill that involved advancing it to debate, though that's in dispute. But it was really a public snipe at the president and what he masquerades as a policy agenda. And if the senator's Washington Postop-ed Friday is any indication, it wasn't the last time.

In a remarkable, if flawed, piece, McCain called for "regular order" in Congress when it resumes its business after Labor Day. But more than that, McCain didn't mince words about the president the body is forced to contend with:

That has never been truer than today, when Congress must govern with a president who has no experience of public office, is often poorly informed and can be impulsive in his speech and conduct.

We must respect his authority and constitutional responsibilities. We must, where we can, cooperate with him. But we are not his subordinates. We don't answer to him. We answer to the American people. We must be diligent in discharging our responsibility to serve as a check on his power. And we should value our identity as members of Congress more than our partisan affiliation.

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This is an astounding rebuke of a sitting president from a senator of his own party, perhaps unprecedented in recent history. McCain is essentially saying that the president does not know how the government functions or how a president—or really, an adult human being—is required to conduct themselves. Even more, he pinpoints a crucial issue with Trump: that because he has no understanding or regard for the Constitution or the functions of democratic government, he believes the federal government is organized like the Trump Organization. Forget checks and balances—he thinks the senators are his regional managers and the congressmen are his sales reps.

"A president who has no experience of public office, is often poorly informed and can be impulsive in his speech and conduct."

McCain is right that our representatives' duty to their constituents and the American people writ large should reign supreme over party allegiances, especially as regards their ability to check the power of a president who increasingly exhibits authoritarian tendencies. (McCain, to his credit, immediately pushed back on Trump's pardon of Sheriff Joe Arpaio, the latest example.) It is incumbent on Republicans in the national legislature to be senators and congressmen, not presidential envoys or lackeys. But McCain's larger diagnosis of the dysfunction in our government is simply wrong. In essence, he tries to attribute the culture of majorities trying to impose their will without compromise, and minorities defaulting to obstructionism-at-all-costs, to Both Sides.

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We are proving inadequate not only to our most difficult problems but also to routine duties. Our national political campaigns never stop. We seem convinced that majorities exist to impose their will with few concessions and that minorities exist to prevent the party in power from doing anything important.

That's not how we were meant to govern. Our entire system of government — with its checks and balances, its bicameral Congress, its protections of the rights of the minority — was designed for compromise. It seldom works smoothly or speedily. It was never expected to.

It was Republicans who repeatedly threatened to shut down the government or refuse to raise the debt ceiling—a move which threatens the full faith and credit of the United States government—to try to torpedo Obamacare when they didn't have the votes to override a presidential veto. That's not to mention House Republicans held more than 50 votes to repeal Obamacare knowing none of those bills would actually become law. Truly, a productive use of The People's money and time.

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On assuming power of both houses in 2016, Senate Republicans tried to force through their own healthcare bill largely in secrecy, abusing a parliamentary procedure so they would only need 51 votes to pass a deeply unpopular bill strictly along partisan lines. That bill struggled—as did the earlier House version—in part because of opposition from Republicans. Because the party's members are so accustomed to obstructionism to appease their increasingly radicalized base, the party's right wing is now in many cases obstructing the party's own agenda. Now, after a Biblical storm hit the red state of Texas, Republicans may well have a civil war over whether to offer disaster relief funds, and how much, and where it should come from, and whether to tie it to raising the debt ceiling. They're even debating whether to raise the debt ceiling at all. Again.

It is John McCain's party—the Republican Party—that broke American democracy at the federal level. Yet the only time "Republican" appears in the piece is in the Washington Post editor's italicized note at the top offering background on the author.

McCain's public call for compromise in a democracy shouldn't be groundbreaking, but in this environment, it deserves commendation. Acknowledging the true situation in the Oval Office, particularly as it relates to governing on Capitol Hill, is right and necessary, particularly from a Republican leader. (It is no coincidence, but not in any way disqualifying, that Trump's support in Arizona is also faltering right now. Due to tragic circumstances, it is also unlikely McCain will run for reelection.) But until McCain and his colleagues recognize that their party is broken, that it produced Trump for a reason, and that the country cannot be fixed until one of its two major political parties is, we will be in this mess for the foreseeable future—with or without Trump running America, Inc.

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